Pacific Rim : A Rant, Review and Revamp of the Story
by FrizFr0z
Summary: Disclaimer: This is not purely a fanfic, nor just a review. These are my thoughts on how Pacific Rim should have been, and a darker, edgier, more sympathetic and honest rewriting of the script. Features a major plot change midway through the story. I am hoping this becomes an interactive discussion on the plot, so please feel free to comment & critique!


So I just watched Pacific Rim on Monday, and I have to admit, hearing its premise before even watching the movie brought out the inner fanboy in me completely. The fact that East and West can be brought together by a mutual love for giant robots pummeling monsters and having things exploding all over the place makes me an unbelievably happy person, so for what it is worth, THANK YOU DEL TORO, from the bottom of my heart. First of all, I'm one of those diehard Evangelion junkies, and am a passionate enough fan of mecha-action (who actually thought the first Transformers was good) to bother writing this rant/review/revision of the story's narrative. Initially, I meant to place this in a discussion thread for Pacific Rim, but it got too lengthy for a standard review/suggestion post. As I continued writing however, I found myself slowly slipping into FanFic territory, so I decided to post it here.** I've split up the review and the rewrite of the plot, so if you wish to skip reading me ranting on and on about the movie, feel free to scroll down to view the plot changes** (although everything I've written is to address the issues that I have with the movie, so I hope you could give it a quick skim-through nonetheless!)

For starters, I have to give mad props to Del Toro's art direction and sense of scale. The cinematography was so immense, so epic that I sincerely felt like I was in immediate danger of being atomized by the foot of a giant Godzilla-monster the minute I sauntered out of the theater. Watching this movie brings out one of those classic moments where you think "an unstoppable force meets an immovable object"… well, almost. The soundtrack was awesome, the Kaijus were great, the Jaegers were great – the movie was a whole lot of fun, and you couldn't ask for much more from a summer blockbuster. But I felt that story-wise, the movie left a lot more to be desired. For one thing, every character seems to be based on tropes. There's the Hotshot White Guy, his Arrogant Rival, the Talented, Untested Rookie, the Eccentric Scientists etc. And precisely because of that, everyone could predict happen when he/she/they did that. Once they showed you Team China/Russia, you knew they were going to die. Once you saw Black Marshall teaming up with Arrogant White Rival, you knew_ they_ were going to die. And once they gave you Anime Action Girl, you knew that there was gonna be a sword!

The battle sequences were awesome; I particularly enjoyed how Del Toro takes care to slow the action down for us to take in the immensity of the destruction. Limbs were flying, metal was flying,_ seagulls_ were flying (a nifty device to highlight the sheer size of the Gipsy Danger when it fell onto the shipping containers); you could feel the impact of every pulverizing blow traded between the two forces of nature. But the bridges between the action set pieces became stagnant after a while. I found myself hoping the talking segments ended quickly so I can dive back into seeing more Machine vs Godzilla-thing action. Intermissions in between witnessing 50,000 Newton fisticuffs of force are welcoming changes of pace, but for these talking segments to work, you need to have people you _care about_. Idris Elba as Stacker Pentecost was _amazing_. The rest…well, not so much. I've read some reviews where some people see the scientists as "scene-stealers". Trust me – I _did _consider Charlie Day as the best actor in the movie after Idris "**WE-ARE-CANCELLING-THE-APOCALYPSE!**" Elba. But casting him in this movie is like putting Captain Jack Sparrow in "The Hunt for Red October" – it does _no_t work, and I'll come back to this later. As for the "normal" folks, _all _the Jaeger pilots lack personality. It is forgivable if the Russians and Chinese pilots are glossed over since they _exist primarily to bite the dust_ (which makes Pacific Rim an _extremely_ racist movie, but who cares?) but the human element is lacking in the main characters of the show.

The problem is not whether the movie had character-building intervals or not, but that those character-building moments felt feeble at best, and on the wrong people. The sad part is you can actually see Del Toro _trying_ to slow down the movie for quieter moments, but they ultimately rang hollow because those moments feel tacked on; they were there just because they _should_ be there – an annoying extra baggage that you have to lug around because cultural norms obligate you to do so. To be honest, the only person I was rooting for midway into the movie was the Marshall, and even so I wasn't rooting for him to live, but to close his stage in a most glorious, spectacular way (which, of course, was the whole point of him being in the movie because in summer movies, "the black guy _always_ dies"). Remember the movie "The Rock" (a Michael Bay film _that was actually good_)? There was a reason to root for even the bad guys in the show, because they were _relatable_ characters. In this movie, I couldn't care less if everyone died, which…well, sort of did happen.

I thought the theme of the movie was _partnership_, and there should have been more development on it, because at the end of the movie I found myself wondering if there was a directorial message (granted, you don't need a message in a movie of robots vs. aliens) and what Raleigh and Mako meant to each other. Were they friends or more than just? It's all very unclear – I remember Raleigh saying something like "all this while I haven't thought of my future until now", which hints at something more, but in general their chemistry together was pretty weak. And so this is my attempt at rewriting the script – if I were given the freedom to do so – to give it more juice and make it more character-driven. I am fully aware that I'm invariably replacing some of the tropes in this movie that didn't sit too well with me with an amalgam of _other_ tropes (and pardon the glaring past/present perfect errors I always make but am hesitant to change because I often flit from storytelling to reviewing) and I apologize if I come across as being influenced by the "darker is better" trend; but in this era where all of us have an inexplicable fascination with "darker, grittier plotlines" in both superhuman movies and video games, I thought this version could paint a more realistic and relatable cast of main characters and their relationships with one another.

So if you think having the following turn of events rocks your boat, or if you agree with my issues with the movie above, let me know! And if you dislike this, ELBOW ROCKET IN YO FACE! - no but seriously, feel free to comment if you didn't like what I've written, how you thought the plot should have changed, or whether you thought it was perfect. Maybe if I receive enough feedback on this, I'd actually write a full fanfic of the events that I thought _should have _transpired, and not just a casual review/narration of what played out in my head.

* * *

Let's start with altering the preliminary sequence, when we are first introduced to the Kaijus, the Jaegers, and the Neural Drift. During the opening battle, we are given a "visual tour" of what Raleigh is experiencing in his neural drift when his brother is torn away from him (I especially thought that the "neural drift" had such an interesting premise that could be expanded upon, but those words were just shoved into our faces without much explanation and so its presentation turned out kind of meh. At this moment in the movie, we see the "drift" as an _expression_, and not a _concept_.) Put yourself in the pilots' shoes. Can you imagine sharing a piece of someone else's thoughts, emotions, and experiences, and also letting them witness a part of your own? It's an extremely intimate bond… and then a Kaiju tears through the cockpit and rips your partner _who had happened to be standing right next to you _right out of the mech. _And kills him_. This is not just the act of simply losing your brother. Imagine how excruciating it must be, at that moment, to experience the same pain, fear, realization and resignation that your brother has at that moment that _he is dying_. Or worse – what if, by abruptly terminating someone whom you had been mind-melding with without "proper disconnection", a fragment of _his _nightmares lingers within your memories? If we were explicitly shown how much of a mental trauma such an ordeal can induce in the Drift, I sincerely believe the introduction could have drawn out a more powerful emotional response from the audience.

After this, you have the words "Pacific Rim" exploding onto the screen. Cut to a scene where we see an emotionally drained Raleigh who is now a broken shell of a man; who is _extremely_ cynical about the world and in particular at the efforts on the wall after seeing the destructiveness of a Level 4 first-hand, instead of just a tired marine who still looks like he could feature on the frontpage of a Playgirl Magazine. (See my problem with Charlie Hunnam is this: Stacker Pentecost was _made for_ Idris Elba. Hannibal Chau was _made for_ Ron Perlman. Mako Mori _might_ be made for Rinko Kikuchi. But Raleigh Becket... let's put it this way. You can replace Charlie Hunnam with Liam Hemsworth, Chris Pine or Channing Tatum and _it wouldn't make a difference._) We are given visual cues of how much of a physical toll piloting the mech, getting battered by the Kaijus, and losing his brother has on him. Then the Marshall comes to meet him and he vehemently denies wanting to be part of the program as usual; then the Marshall brings up the "do you want to die here, or in a Jaeger… if you don't pilot the Jaeger, your brother won't be the only person you lose" etc etc speech which forces him back into the program_. In reality Raleigh wants back in into the Jaeger program primarily because he is sick of life and half wishes to kill himself _(which he later confesses to Mako. Wouldn't it be better if you showed the audience more of his motivations for returning?)

And the story goes on as per normal, we are introduced to the rest of the Jaeger teams, Raleigh meets Mako, the two have their little stick-fighting icebreaker session (Garrus Vakarian-style, "_I had reach, but she had flexibility!_") Except this time we're told that Chuck the Arrogant White Rival (I shall call him **AWR** in short) was the** first person able to pilot a Jaeger _all by himself_ without any mental side effects** if he was required to. You can't put an arrogant white rival there just to be _the_ arrogant white rival in the movie – give him a reason to be arrogant! He sees Raleigh and Mako as a representation of imperfection; that even though Raleigh has an upper hand on him in terms of fighting skills, he doesn't have the handicap of needing a second person to mind-meld with, and hence has the best "human-Jaeger sync" of all the Jaeger pilots (pardon the Asuka Langley shout-out). _Which lends more weight to why he scoffed at Mako when she failed her first simulation test and nearly proton-cannoned the last hopes of humanity off the face of the Earth._

Let's add a little more zing to explain why AWR was also acting like a jealous ex-wife to Raleigh. In the final moments of the _official _Jaeger program (which the UN for some unfathomable reason decided to shut it down _because building paper castles around the towns seemed to make so much more sense_) the Marshall directed all its remaining funds to build a state-of-the-art Gipsy Danger 2, even newer than the AWR's Striker Eureka, as the first one was decommissioned after its near-demise. What remains of the original Gypsy Danger still stands beside its more modern counterparts, though it is now a washed up, rusty shell of its former glory. And the Marshall clearly intends for Raleigh to use this new toy, because he was the best fighter back in his glory days. There's a more important reason for there to be two Gipsy Dangers, but I'll develop on later.

While both Raleigh and Mako were distanced from the rest of the pack after the simulation round failure, they begin to form a bond with each other ("_**WE'RE** drift _**_COMPATIBLE_**!"). Both were social outcasts – Raleigh because he conducted himself as a contemptuous asshole to others after he became so cynical with life; Mako because the Marshall was overprotective of her, and because she was the inexperienced rookie who didn't socialize well with others. Both shared a mutual respect for each other after the fighting demonstration. Raleigh is intrigued by Mako because he possessed a pathological disregard for rules, and here is a lady who seemed to have lived her life _revolved around rules_ (and the fact that for an Asian chick, she had a pretty decent rack, but that's beside the point).

I felt Mako could have been given more character, instead of being that stereotypical duty-driven Japanese samurai girl trope she was there to fulfill. How about portraying Mako as an energetic, enthusiastic, optimistic girl – the _yin_ to Raleigh's _yang_ of bitterness and sobriety? They bicker at first, though both are clearly fascinated with each other – _and then Mako becomes the key to unlocking Raleigh's belief in humanity again._ ("The Last of Us", anyone?) When Raleigh has a conversation with her about her experience as a child (which I felt this movie _sorely_ needs – to actually _hear _Mako speak of her motivations for wanting to become a Jaeger pilot and not just play witness to her childhood), she tells him how she lost her entire family, her entire city. And then the Marshall's towering Jaeger took down their 2000-ton murderer and the man himself emerges from the top _like a_ _god_ (he practically had a halo around him when he stood up and gave everyone that "this-is-what-it-looks-like-to-be-a-boss" face in the movie). All her friends and family were gone, yet this man saved her, and still continued to save the world – he gave her her life and her purpose. Here was the symbol that there was hope that mankind could win and humanity saved. And thus she adopted an optimistic and cheerful personality in the face of imminent disaster, to live her life that the Marshall has snatched from Death to the fullest, and lead this life by the morals and honor code that she picked up from her foster father.

This is why Mako views pilots like Raleigh and the Marshall in the highest regard (which, of course, eventually leads to her romantic interest in Raleigh). Both of them bond over having lost members of their family to the Kaiju. "I won't lie," Raleigh admits, "I came back into the program because a part of me wished I had died with my brother." "But life can be such a beautiful thing," Mako says. "That day, I lost my whole family. The city that I grew up in was leveled to the ground. Yet I was saved, a sole survivor of the Tokyo incident. There must be a reason why I'm still here, breathing the wonderful air of life, absorbing its sights and sounds, interacting with a thousand other hearts and minds. The world is something worth fighting for." She asks Raleigh questions about what it felt like to be a Jaeger pilot; how it felt like to be saving the world, giving Raleigh a chance to reconcile himself with the past he had long stashed away into the darkest troves of his mind. And while he would not admit it, he tacitly realizes that while he has been selfishly motivated to fight to seek death, she has been selflessly motivated to fight to seek life. Admittedly this is an overused trope, but hey, _character development_!

**AND HERE IS WHERE YOU DO AWAY WITH THE MAD SCIENTISTS SCENES**. I presume those scenes were there either as an embodiment of Del Toro's zany imagination or as a way to reach out to the younger audience, but you can seriously pull off humor (pun intended) in this movie without having to resort to slapstick and caricatures. Such an egregious effort to satisfy a trope makes the movie feel very tonally confused, because one moment we see people dying and another moment we see someone acting the fool – does the movie want to take itself seriously or not? For ****'s sake, it's an _apocalyptic _world! In this context, things like the Marshall's epic one-liners ("One, don't ever touch me again. Two, don't ever touch me again") work, but things like both scientists acting all sorts of Down-syndromy don't. Cutting down on those scenes does take away some characterization from the scientists, who also contribute to the whole "partnership" theme that this movie has, but what the show needed was more time to develop the_ main_ partnership than pepper it with those two's dissonant dialogue. Personally, I'd take both of them out of the picture, and just have one "normal" scientist who was brave, stupid and desperate enough to do a mind-meld with a Kaiju near the second half of the movie, to compensate for the extra content that I'm tacking on while not exceeding the 2.5 hour mark.

This is where the plot deviates from the movie. The Kaijus attack and all the Jaegers are mobilized to deal with it. The Marshall gives his Rousing Speech loaded with heroic one-liners and everyone's raring to go. Of course Team China and Team Russia get destroyed (admit it, once you saw those guys appear you knew they were going to get ****ed), one of the Kaijus use the EMP thing that shuts down AWR's mech, and Gypsy Danger 2 is mobilized because it has state-of-the-art tech that keeps it functional (an alternative to the original Gypsy Danger having analog controls). **_Only this time the Marshall does NOT allow Mako into the mech, and becomes Raleigh's co-pilot instead_**. Partly because of his protectiveness of Mako and that facing down TWO Class 4 Kaijus is practically a suicide mission, and partly because he is going to die and wants to make full use of his remaining time (which in my version Mako does NOT know about). Mako gives Raleigh a pleading look, and our protagonist confronts the Marshall again on why he is stopping Mako from living her destiny. This is where the Marshall confesses to him out of her earshot that he is dying. Raleigh understands, then tells a dismayed Mako that he has no choice but to follow his orders – because the last time he disobeyed them, he lost his brother. Mako resists, gets ordered to stand down by her father, and her last conversation with him ends with her accusing him if he thought his daughter was too weak to be a pilot. "All my life I've been looking up to you, training to be like you, living to be like you. And now you are denying me the right to be like my father?" "No," he replies. "But you are my daughter." Enraged and confused, Mako looks bitterly as her foster father gives her a sad smile and enters the mech.

During the fight, we see the Gipsy Danger 2 handing Leatherback (Land Kaiju) its ass on the platter at first, but this time Otachi (Flying Kaiju) proves too much of an opponent to handle. Both Raleigh and the Marshall hold it off at first, but the Marshall then receives the signal that more Kaijus are coming. Meanwhile, AWR's Striker Eureka is whirring back to life. The Gipsy Danger 2 duo works in tandem to buy them some time. In between fisticuffs of epic proportions, Raleigh's half of the Jaeger gets paralyzed. Two more Kaijus (the ones at the end of the movie) emerge from the water. Now fully functional, Striker Eureka attempts to help, but the Marshall orders the unit to fall back because the odds were stacked against them. And so he intends to activate his self-destruct sequence. "Save yourselves," he commanded. "The world would need you yet." In a semi-conscious state, Raleigh hears the Marshall's attempt to reach out to him through the neural bridge, telling him to tell Mako that he was proud of her; that he was sorry. It's up to both of them to continue the fight now, he says. _Take care of her for me_. He reaches over and arms Raleigh's escape pod, then fends off Otachi _solo_ with a half-functional Jaeger to distract them from Raleigh. Striker Eureka picks up Raleigh's pod and successfully disengages from the battle. In the ensuing struggle, Otachi then scoops up a hapless Gipsy Danger 2, flies back towards the coastline, and drops it as spoils among the two other Kaijus. Now out of range of the city, the Marshall attempts to trigger the self-destruct mechanism, but in a massive **"FML"** moment realizes it has been damaged during the fight. Mako and the rest of the resistance can only watch at a distance in abject horror as Gipsy Danger 2, the most advanced Jaeger humanity has to offer, gets torn into pieces together with its remaining pilot. The team retreat back to the Sydney Shatterdome. The situation is desperate. Hong Kong has fallen. The leader of the Resistance has fallen. Humanity only has one active Jaeger left.

* * *

In the ensuing weeks, we see reports of increasingly frequent Kaiju attacks on the rest of the world. The outlook for mankind seems terribly bleak. Raleigh regains consciousness after an_ entire week_ plagued by nightmares of losing his brother and the Marshall, and realizes that he had lost another partner. _Again!_ Burdened by survivor's guilt and the neural shock of having lost another fragment of his memories to yet another fallen co-pilot, he fears for the loss of his sanity. He runs into AWR outside the medical bay, now just WR – humbled by the Marshall's sacrifice to save his and everyone else's lives, he has lost all semblance of his former arrogance. WR apologizes to Raleigh for being an utter douche, mentions that he understood what was at stake here, and that they needed to work as a team if they wanted to save humanity. Raleigh, however, isn't so sure if he wants back in. Keep in mind that he must be ****ing demoralized by now, having lost not one, but TWO partners who were _mentally_ engaged with him right until they died. Unamused, WR smashes a right cross into the face of an unresisting Raleigh, calling him out for a coward and angrily telling him "this is not what the Marshall gave his life to save you for". Raleigh simply stares back at him with emotionless eyes, telling him "you would never understand". "Maybe not," admits Chuck. "But_ she _would," shifting his gaze towards the door that led to Mako's room.

_(Alas! At this point I have to admit the more I write this, the more I realize this is a half-assed attempt at actually composing a story than simply reviewing, commenting and suggesting minor plot changes to a movie. But I feel the need to pen down what happens next in greater detail, because ultimately I feel that it contributes to the much needed chemistry between the leads.)_

Cautiously, Raleigh opens the door and finds a despondent Mako sitting on her bed and gazing forlornly at one of her foster father's old Jaeger pictures; the military man was sporting a rare smile with his group of Mark 1-III Jaeger pilot friends. "Po Xichi. Horizon Brave. Killed in action against Meathead, Class 2 Kaiju. Marco Dallaire. Chrome Brutus. Killed in action against Titanus, Class 3 Kaiju. One by one they fell," she said, "and then _he_ did. He had seemed like such a monolith of strength, a stalwart of humanity; mankind's very finest. Yet he was no less human than the rest of us are."

"How are you holding up, partner?" Raleigh asked gently, putting his arm around her petite shoulders.

"Not too good," Mako admitted. "But better than you I think. You look terrible!" She laughed, brushing off a stray tear that had been seeping down her cheek.

"I think you might be right there," he chuckled as he checked himself out on the mirror on the wall. The man who stared back at him was nearly unrecognizable. His face was gaunt, unshaven, zombie-like. Heavy eyebags lined a pair of eyes that looked devoid of life. An ugly red welt had developed on his cheek from where Chuck had hit him. He sighed, and then turned to look at the picture she was holding.

"That's my brother," Raleigh pointed, "he was the first person I shared my thoughts and memories with. It is a strange thing when you first establish a neural bridge – you feel someone wandering through your hopes and fears, your darkest secrets, your deepest memories; and you feel this...this tide of helplessness surge over you as all the inner demons you wanted to bury not just to others, but even to yourself, are exposed. But as you drift together through each others' memories, there is a sense of comfort in that your partner is experiencing the same things as you do, and you needn't be afraid even as you relive your worst nightmares, because someone is there with you.

I lost him in a fight against a Class 3 Kaiju. _Knifehead_, they called him, and he was bigger than anything we had ever seen. But we were cocky bastards, staving off the monsters, saving the world. Men admired us. Women desired us. Children tuned in to Saturday morning Jaeger versus Kaiju cartoons, and bought action figures of us by the truckload, dreaming that one day they'd have a chance to take up the suit. We were rock stars, placed on the pedestal, worshipped as gods among men. We thought we were above orders. Above death. Indestructible. And then_ it_ happened."

His gaze turned cold. "I remember being asked by the hundreds of people who recognized me at the Wall. Why I could not just return back to the PPDC and resume my work as a Jaeger pilot. It isn't easy," he swallowed, "to lose someone you care about; someone you have quarreled with, fought with, played with, talked about girls in prom with all your life; not just lose him, but see him plucked right from your side like a worm in a tree by a bird-of-prey with a head the size of a ferry. What made it worse was that while we still wore that suit, we were still connected by the neural handshake."

"Do you know what that means? To sever an active neural bridge?" A shadow loomed over Raleigh's once-handsome features. "It's a scary feeling, when you try to remember the face of your mother, and realize you forgot what she looked like. Sometimes, I've had strangers approach me at the Wall, greeting me. 'Do you remember me?' they said. 'I used to play football with you back in high school!' And I tried and tried, but those memories of mine seem to have died away with my brother; they just… _vanished_ into the Drift, like whispers in the forest, disappearing as you come closer, searching behind tree after tree after tree. It's as if someone had sliced open your brain and took a part of you with it.

I spent every other day in my life having nightmares ever since. Thing is, half of those weren't even _my _nightmares. They were _his_."

"I had no idea you had such a burden to bear," Mako breathed.

Seeing the wide-eyed girl beside him, Raleigh's expression softened. "I'm sorry," he sighed. "I'm lamenting about losing a partner to a girl who has just lost her father. That was thoughtless of me. Listen, Mako – I know the Marshall didn't tell you this, but he went into that fight knowing he was already going to die of the passive radiation from piloting a Jaeger. In the earlier Jaeger prototypes, there was a lack of radiation shielding in the nuclear core. He didn't stop you from joining that battle because he thought you were incapable of doing so. He did it because he didn't know how much time he had left, and he couldn't risk losing you in a 2 for 1 battle." He paused, waiting anxiously for her response.

But Mako didn't cry. Perhaps it was due to that stoic nature of hers, perhaps she had no tears left to shed after a week of mourning for her father; but she merely swallowed and said slowly, "I accused him of not taking me seriously as his daughter right before he entered the Jaeger. That was the last I ever saw of him."

"He didn't take it to heart." Raleigh said gently, grasping her hand in his and giving it a reassuring squeeze. "He was a brave man right until the end. I could sense it through our neural bridge. When my brother died, I could feel his terror and anguish, and it continues to gnaw at my conscience till this day. But there was no trace of fear in the Marshall even as he accepted his defeat. You know, I think Death would be pretty afraid of him." They both laughed. "Throughout that one week when I was asleep, his last command guided me out of my nightmares, giving me a sense of purpose. 'Tell Mako that I'm sorry,' he said. 'And tell her I am proud of everything she has become.' And there was truth in his words, because I've seen through all his memories, and watched you grow beside him.

He loves you, Mako. Don't you ever forget it."

There was a pause as both of them stared at each other, pondering over those last words. The TV in the room was still running in the background – ("…we've received news that a Category 4 Kaiju has just attacked Rome. Residents in the area were unable to…"). She was the first to break the silence. "Do you remember our first exercise?" Mako quipped. "The little girl running down the street; the Kaiju, huge and terrifying, that had haunted her dreams? I thought I had locked that memory away for good, but in that moment where everything had manifested itself into reality, everything had seemed so visceral. So real. I couldn't help but raise my hand to protect myself from the monster, endangering everyone's lives that day. I had been arrogant about my abilities, but now I'm not sure if his faith in me was well-placed," she sniffed. "Maybe I wasn't cut out to be a Jaeger pilot after all."

"Don't be too hard on yourself," Raleigh assured. "The first drift has always been a hard pill to swallow. Everyone chases the RABIT at some point. Why, the first time I went down that line, I was bawling and beating away at the chest of my brother for the next two hours!" He smiled. "You were the best of the best; the only one I thought was capable enough for me to share a neural handshake with. Though we were definitely lucky they disconnected the arming sequence in time. Come to think of it," Raleigh scratched his head in bewilderment, "why did they even allow the weapons systems to be armed when testing a _rookie_?"

"To tell you the truth," Mako replied, drawing closer, "I think I managed to compose myself even before they severed the power."

"Really? I suppose that was after you saw the Marshall?" he asked.

"Before I saw the Marshall, I saw you. Amidst the roar of the Kaiju and the screeching of its claws against the concrete, I heard a voice reaching out to me. Somehow, you reached in and pulled me back out of the darkness. And all of a sudden, I was in your arms, crying like a baby." Her face was now inches away from his. "And then I realized one thing...

_Anataga inai to yatte ikenai, Raleigh-sama_ (_I need you_)," she whispered softly.

She had expected Raleigh to recoil, to stand up in consternation, but the veteran held her gaze. He smiled ruefully, remembering something.

"Before he died, the Marshall made me promise one last thing. He said, '_Take care of Mako for me_.'"

Her eyes widened in surprise, and then she faltered; the stolid facade that she had erected had all but broken down. Grief had finally caught up with her, along with another feeling; the black orbs that met his blue ones glistened with tears, and she flung herself unceremoniously into his arms.

"_Soba ni ite hoshii yo. Onegai. (Stay with me. Please.)"_

He had lost two partners. She had lost two fathers. Behind them, the Colosseum of Rome – the pinnacle of Roman architecture, had now been reduced to a sorry pile of stone and rubble. Yet at that moment, they had forgotten about everything else – only the person beside each other. Bonded by their losses amidst the global crisis, locked together in a tight embrace, their lips connected; the two souls became one, and then nothing else mattered in the world.

**(T.B.C.)**

* * *

So it turns out I can't finish writing everything in my mind in one sitting, and I need to take the day off to finish something important, but I'll update on the rest of the story as quickly as I can. In the meantime though, please post your thoughts, comments and suggestions, positive or not. (I'm not a Kaiju. I don't bite!) Even if you don't have anything to say about how I think the plot should be changed, if you have something Pacific-Rim related that you simply must say, feel free to comment on that as well - I'm always happy to talk about movies. If I get enough feedback to do so, I'll try my best to actually write a full fanfic based on the events above!


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